Debate features the unruffled vs. the unprepared: Our view

The audience for Monday night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was expected to be massive, drawn to a showdown between two historically unpopular candidates. And surveys showed an unusually large number of voters are still up for grabs. Some 34% of people in a Wall Street Journal poll said that debates would be very important in their choice, with 11% considered “debate persuadables.”

Trump went into the first of three debates needing to show some level of gravitas by displaying a command of complex issues and refraining from some of the more juvenile antics he showed in the Republican primary.

While he didn’t suffer a meltdown, Trump displayed a distinct lack of preparation. And, for someone who has harped on his opponent’s health and stamina, he suffered from a distracting case of the sniffles.

Trump’s answer to a question on the decades-long nuclear first strike policy showed no indication he was even familiar with the topic. His effort to talk around his five-year falsehood about President Obama’s birth certificate was less than convincing. And his continued insistence that he did not support the Iraq War, when he clearly did in a 2002 interview, violated the first rule of holes — when you are in one, stop digging.

As is Trump's usual custom, he showed little concern with factual accuracy. This was clear when he said he only took a “small loan” from his father to start out in business, when he denied calling climate change a hoax, when he claimed that murders were up in New York City, and when he said Clinton had been fighting the Islamic State terrorist group her entire adult life. None of this is true.

Baiting, flailing and bluster: The first presidential debate

He also appears to have come close to admitting that he paid little or no federal income tax with a quick rejoinder that said that if he did pay taxes, the money would be wasted by the federal government.

Trump was at his strongest when he talked about America’s decaying infrastructure, jobs moving overseas and the vacuum created in Iraq by the Obama administration’s 2010 troop withdrawal, which contributed to the rise of ISIL.

Clinton, for her part, went in hoping to project a level of humanity and trustworthiness that has been her biggest deficit. She also tried to get under Trump’s skin so that he’d appear rattled.

She was clearly more composed and informed, at times simply allowing Trump to rattle on, perhaps on the assumption he was doing himself no good. At times she simply looked on Buddha-like or smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

She was also better prepared. Her answers might not have always been eloquent, but they seemed to have a beginning, middle and end, while having a logical consistency to them.

She may have done the best when she said that — unlike Trump — she was prepared for the debate, and would be prepared to assume the presidency.

On the downside, she appeared at times to be stiff and wonkish, missing opportunities to connect policy proposals with real people. It was far from clear that she succeeded in projecting more humanity, or to relieve some of the doubts people had about her. But all things considered, an unruffled performance might have been good enough.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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